Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Passover

Reflection on Holy Thursday, Year A

Moses told the Hebrews to prepare for their journey of liberation by eating prescribed food and marking their doors with the blood of lamb on which they feasted. They set off, on foot, through desert and sea to and throughout the land promised by God.

The ancients used their feet, just as we do— dirty, calloused, twisted, arthritic, gnarled, hard or soft, massaged with oil, too, sweet scented or not, smelly sweaty feet common— all sorts and conditions of human feet. on journeys called by God.

Now here is something very strange: Rabbi Jesus wants to wash our feet — even Peter’s, who, of course, objects as he always does. Is there ever a time when there is not at least one Peter in the group, one long ago offended by the idea of his Lord stooping to wash feet, like today’s recoiling at showing the imperfection of feet, even more at being asked to touch others’?

Today, on Passover, Jews everywhere, believers or not, gather to share bitter herbs, unleavened bread, greens, haroset, and lamb or substitute. Most Christians avoid Jesus when it comes to feet. Strange. So many ask, “What would Jesus do?” How about: what he did? Just not with feet.

A preacher said, “Jesus touched his heart and there was healing in his hands.” I want healed feet for miles ahead, years, I pray, of journeying with God. I need strong, resilient feet empowered to support journeys from my Egypts to new worlds promised again and again. I want company, too, I can’t make it alone. Let me bless yours with living water, sacred touch, our Jesus feet guiding us all the way together.

About this poem . . .Every year on Holy Thursday, I am deeply moved by the washing of feet. It is such a humble act—to allow my feet to be washed and to wash others’—so like Jesus to assume the role of servant and invite us to do the same. The invitation, I hear command, is to be agents of healing and to allow ourselves to be healed by the human touch of others.

Written for and Delivered at the
Interfaith Passover Seder
sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace – Metro DC Chapter
at Calvary Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.
March 19, 2017/5777

I join you tonight as I did last year in prayer and hope, as a queer Christian minister and theologian/poet, married to a beautiful Jewish man, member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Reform Temple, and an LGBTQI affirming, multi-racial Protestant church, citizen of this nation that still imprisons Native peoples on reservations and kills descendants of slaves on the streets for crimes of living while Red and/or Black, where plagues of ethnic, gender, religious, bodily, and sexual hates are often the center of public life, as they live and grow among some at or near the pinnacle of national leadership.

We are not alone in taking land, we know its ancient roots in Torah, and we know countless ones today who are displaced, unplaced, misplaced, replaced as were hundreds of thousands in the Nakba, just as we know that second class citizens live not only in prisons, ghettos, and reservations here but also on streets and in neighborhoods of Jerusalem, along with others who are citizens of no country confined to refugee camps, water-less deserts, and outposts under constant threat of dislocation, trying to live and breathe where once they were born and played as children, and grew to tend their flocks and orchards.

So as we gather in the midst of ugliness, fear, and othering, we claim our inheritance as people who cherish liberation, our own and that of others, knowing this day
like all others is made for us to wake up, grow up,
look up, act up, stand up, live up, speak up
so captives go free.

We gather in an ancient and honorable ritual
celebrating another time when people rose to be free,
and like them our words, songs, prayers, and food
prepare us and recommit us to march, to resist,
to claim the mantle bequeathed by Moses,
and Esther and Jeremiah, to speak truth to powers,
to say to modern princes: Let the people of Palestine breathe,
end the Occupation of their land, their homes, their minds—
and yes, well-funded overlords, free yourselves from the tangled webs
you create with ancient enmities and entitlements
creating more war, more chaos, more ugliness, more death.

We seek a new way, a time of milk and honey for all, when peace and justice glow in and through the golden dome of God for all the world. We shall do our part to make it so, knowing, believing, it is our divinely inspired mission, to join with many others here and there, to create the new Jerusalem, the new Israel, the new Palestine, the new USA, the new people there and here, everywhere, no longer living and walking in fear, no longer dispossessed, no longer forgotten, no longer denied entry, exit, jobs, housing, life, or dignity for being on the wrong side of one line, one wall, one gate, one identity, or another.

Written for and Delivered at the Interfaith Passover Seder sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace – Metro DC Chapter at Calvary Baptist Church, Washington, D.C. April 3, 2016/5776

Praying to Change the World

I join you tonight in prayer and hope and peace and love, even joy, as a queer Christian minister and theologian, married to a beautiful Jewish man, a father, grandfather, brother, uncle, member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Conservative/Reconstructionist synagogue and an LGBTQI affirming, multi-racial Protestant church, citizen of this land that is still far from free, that still imprisons Native peoples on reservations and kills descendants of slaves on the streets for crimes of living while Red and/or Black where ethnic, gender, religious, bodily, and sexual hates are often the center of our national dialogue, and embraced by some who want to be our leaders. That is my personal context; it probably bears at least some relation to yours. We are in this together, one way or another.

We gather with our own histories and our shared history. We know that we are not alone in taking land from those who lived on the land before us, we know its ancient roots as recorded in Torah and we know countless ones today who are displaced, unplaced, misplaced, replaced as were hundreds of thousands in the Nakba, just as we know that second class citizens live not only in prisons and jails here but also on streets and in neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

So we gather in the truth of this time with all its ugliness and fear and othering, but we are here also because we claim our inheritance as people who know something about liberation, our own and that of others, and because we know this day like all other days is made for us to wake up,
grow up, look up, act up, stand up, live up, speak up
from our heritage as people whose Creator breathes life
into all beings, pouring sacred water down
for all beings without exception, not based on any
puny criteria of mortals who walk among us.

What makes this night different from all other nights?
Only this: we are gathered here today in an ancient
and honorable ritual, but if all we do is recite the words,
sing the songs, eat the food, say the prayers it will
fade like so many other days into the cavernous
space of forgotten promises, avoided truths, fearful
inaction, well-meaning but empty expressions of care.

So as we proclaim again, Next Year In Jerusalem, we don’t want it to be the same one it is now, we want it to be a truly golden city, of real peace. We intend to do our part to make it so, because we are drawing this day on the power of each other and all sacred beings who roam among us, and we know, we believe, that it is our mission, our divinely inspired mission, to join with others, many others here and there, to create the new Jerusalem, the new Israel, the new Palestine, the new USA, the new people there and here, everywhere, no longer living and walking in fear, no longer dispossessed, no longer forgotten, no longer denied entry, exit, jobs, housing, life, or dignity for being on the wrong side of one line, one wall, one gate, one identity, or another.

We pray tonight, whether prayers be traditional or postmodern, whether they be to a power greater than ourselves or desire spoken in unbelief only to ourselves, or perhaps not spoken with lips at all but on our posters and in letters to editors— because we are all in this together, one way or another, and because I know, and I believe you know, we can change the world. Amen.